'Marriage Lite' : The State Of Our Unions [Civil Unions]

A January study in The New York Times sent a shiver through the institution of marriage when it found a continuing decline in the percentage of women who are married and living with their spouses. For days afterward, experts quibbled over the exact numbers and the regional differences; no one disputed that a smaller percentage of people are married. Today is the last of our articles exploring the state of our unions.

At one point in the nearly two-hour DVD from Rick Bach and Fred Colon's civil union ceremony, Bach looks at Colon and melts into happy tears.

In fact, there were a lot of tears that rainy day last April when Bach and Colon, who have been together a decade, gathered friends and relatives at St. Clements Castle in Portland for an ornate yet raucous celebration that included Colon's donning a long white train over his tuxedo to command the dance floor.

To the men, the ceremony was an acknowledgement of a quieter one six years ago, when they stood in an Italian church alone and pledged themselves to one another.

In their eyes, they're married.

In the eyes of the state of Connecticut, they are partners in a civil union -- sort of "marriage lite,'' say critics. Civil unions are unique legal relationships that fall short of marriage in terms of rights.

According to the latest statistics from the state Department of Public Health, there have been 1,330 civil unions in Connecticut since they became legal on Oct. 1, 2005. Civil unions are also offered in other countries -- including Portugal, France and New Zealand -- to same-sex and opposite-sex couples, said Marianne DelPo Kulow, director of the Women's Leadership Institute at Bentley College. Civil unions are also available to same-sex couples in Denmark and Mexico.

Does that mean that marriage is being replaced? Probably not.

For example, Scott Haltzman, a psychiatrist and co-author of "The Secrets of Happily Married Men: Eight Ways To Win Your Wife's Heart Forever'' (Jossey-Bass, $14.95), said that for many couples, the idea of civil unions is too new and too vague.

"The whole idea of marriage is making your beloved a member of your family, and vice versa,'' Haltzman said. "Civil unions have no rules and, therefore, don't work as a form of social glue the way marriage does. And what do you call the mother-in-law? The `mother of my civilly joined partner'?''

Connecticut's advocates of same-sex marriage seek civil marriage, not religious blessings. But in most people's minds, in marriage, "You completely combine two lives in a legal, financial, social, emotional and religious way,'' said Brette McWhorter Sember, author of a series of books on gay and lesbian rights, including "The Complete Gay Divorce.'' "I don't think that our country will ever be able to make marriage purely a legal thing. Too many people like it the way it is and are offended at the thought of having to separate the two.''

To many people, the rituals in marriage ceremonies mean something, as do the rights that follow. Most likely, rather than a cultural shift in our attitudes surrounding marriage, social observers predict the discussions about same-sex marriage will continue state by state -- at least for now.

This legislative session, Connecticut is considering whether to legalize same-sex marriages. Throughout the debate, voters can expect to hear many of the same questions -- some heated and impassioned -- that arose during the discussions about civil unions. At a Hartford meeting on Wednesday where marriage-equality supporters gathered to lobby legislators, the crowd laughed when Love Makes a Family executive director Anne Stanback asked that supporters be "civil'' to people who oppose marriage equality.

As rock singer Pat Benatar famously sang, "Love is a battlefield,'' but it is the institution of marriage that is often the arena in which issues are waged. Women's rights -- rights in matters of contraception and sexual intimacy -- and race restrictions on who can marry have often been decided through the prism of marriage, said Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom To Marry and author of "Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality & Gay People's Right To Marry'' (Simon & Schuster, $13).

Until recently, the battles haven't been over rituals. Marriage's rituals are mostly for show anyway, said Wolfson.

"When people think of marriage, they think of a bride wearing white, a groom in a tux standing at an altar,'' he said. "In the eyes of the law, that all means exactly nothing. What counts legally is not what you do at the altar but what you do in a zombie state in the vestibule when you sign those papers.''

When Wolfson was in law school in the early 1980s, his professors were hesitant to oversee a paper he wrote on the need for gay marriage. At the time, he said, the idea was considered too far-fetched. So, "in historical terms, this has moved very quickly,'' Wolfson said.

"When I was a young attorney, we ended the marital rape exemption,'' Wolfson said. "It was part of the law that a man could not be prosecuted for raping his wife. He could take what `belonged' to him. This is not an artifact of the Civil War. I worked on it, in New York. It had its defenders. It took time for people to understand.''

It is likely that the distinction between civil unions and marriages will take some time to sort as well.

If the laws were changed and the institution of "marriage'' was replaced with "civil union'' for all, would that settle the argument?

People like Sember have suggested all couples be accorded "a legal marriage that conferred state and federal rights and then had a religious marriage as something completely separate'' if they choose. "This way,'' Sember said, "everyone could get married in the eyes of the law, and everyone could then deal with their own religious beliefs in their own way.''

As it stands, under the Defense of Marriage Act (known as DOMA) passed in 1996, marriage is defined as a legal union between one man and one woman. DOMA also says that states did not have to recognize same-sex marriages. Yet the debate continues.

In 2004, voters in 11 states passed ballot initiatives banning same-sex marriages. And yet in the last election, pro-marriage-equality candidates like Connecticut state Sen. Andrew J. McDonald, D-Stamford, were returned to office by voters. McDonald is co-chairman of the judicial committee and an outspoken supporter of marriage equality.

A recent Quinnipiac University poll said 39 percent of Connecticut voters say same-sex couples should be allowed to legally marry, while 33 percent say they should be allowed to enter civil unions but not marriage. The same poll found 22 percent saying "there should be no legal recognition of a same-sex union.''

Adam Cote, a New Britain justice of the peace, performed his first civil union in Middletown right after the law went into effect, he said. He said most of the couples for whom he's performed the ceremony have been together for a long time, some up to 30 or more years. He said he has performed about 50 ceremonies so far.

A justice of the peace officiated at Bach and Colon's ceremony. The flowers were based on a Leonardo da Vinci painting. They rented a '57 Bentley, and Bach designed his suit and a dress for his 12-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. The theme was "Fortunate and Blessed,'' and the DVD includes guests who talk about the ceremony's being the best wedding -- no one called it a civil union -- they'd ever attended.

"Legislators in Connecticut have to ask themselves if civil unions and marriages are the same -- in which case why do we need two lines at the clerk's office?'' Wolfson said. "Or they're not the same, in which case what is the government withholding from these couples and their kids? It's not just semantics. Words do matter.''